Countdown with Keith Olbermann

SEASON 3 EPISODE 139: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: So we're going to do that whole Iraq crap again. Only swapping out the last letter. "Iran" instead of "Iraq." Because nobody remembers Bush and people think Trump is somehow anti-war, when he's doing all this because of his desperate FOMO that there is something somewhere on Fox News that he is not being given personal credit for.  Only he's skipping the whole phony terrorism-9/11-pancake uranium-manufactured evidence dance and just saying "we're doing it to save Israel" even though the evangelicals who WANT to "save" Israel like Mike Huckabee really want just to make sure nobody but them destroys Israel, since the end of their prophecy is that when there are no Jews anywhere but Israel, there'll be a rapture, and all the Jews will convert or, you know, bye-bye. It's complete delusional snake-handling level religion. And as for the US military, the purpose of war with Iran would be the same as was the purpose of war with Iraq: to HAVE a war in which you can DESTROY B-2 Stealth Bombers and thus increase the Pentagon budget. As Big Jim McBob and Billy Sol Hurok would say: "Blowed 'em up good. Blowed 'em real good!" PLUS: Governor Hochul of New York uses the mot juste about what appears to have been a set-up of NYC Comptroller Brad Lander. ICE swings back towards seizing the people who keep the red states from starving. And those Trump American Phones are made in China. B-Block (32:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: CNN/MSNBC screw up the ratio of ICE protest coverage to No Kings protest coverage; Stephen Miller runs Trump but Katie Miller runs Stephen Miller; Karoline Leavitt inexplicably posts a photo of Trump wearing a dunce cap.  C-Block (43:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: This week was the 25th anniversary of the day my mother became famous, and loved every moment of it, when she got hit in the face by a baseball thrown by the second baseman of the Yankees - while I was doing the highlights of that game on Fox's national game of the week telecast. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 138: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: The Minnesota Assassinations and Trump's Toy Tank Parade proved it again this weekend: Without violence, he is nothing. No tanks? No guns? No bombs (to fulfill his FOMO over not getting to bomb Iran)? No threat if you protest you'll be harmed? Beaten, even if you're a Senator? No parades? No Pro-Life Murderers? Without them, Trump is nothing. Unfortunately - as the weekend showed - they are all still here. ON THE OTHER HAND:  There is some small respite this morning. They got the 2011 Georgia Crops report and printed it out and pasted in some pictures of Trump or something and made it brief and showed it to him and all of a sudden he TACO’d on the ICE Gestapo round-ups of immigrants. At least the ones in agriculture, hotels, and restaurants because, you know… mass starvation. Well, mass starvation LATER. First, mass lower corporate profits IN agriculture, hotels, and restaurants. As I've cited endlessly since the report came out, in 2011 Georgia warned it would detain all undocumented migrant farm workers. Suddenly all the onions, watermelons, blueberries were rotting in the fields and Georgia farms were going bankrupt because they were 40% short of workers and the Georgia citizens recruited to replace them were no good at the jobs or quit because it was too tough and by the middle of summer Georgia had lost $75,000,000 in agricultural income. So that, times fifty. BUT PHILOSOPHICALLY: Even when the manifestos were found inside the car of the Minnesota Pro-Life Assassin, Senator Mike Lee went on Musk's Disinformation Platform to brand him a "marxist." Or all the fictionalized accounts of the assault on Senator Alex Padilla. Because the key to being infected with MAGA disease is to reach the conclusion that best suits you, then make up the facts to fit the outcome. We will defeat Trump. I don't know how we will defeat this. B-Block (36:11) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: There's always a tweet and for this moment in Iran, it's from Tulsi 2020 Gabbard. Then there are two tales of achieving peak idiocy about the assault on Senator Padilla from opposite directions: Stephen A. Smith, who started with no political experience or insight and has somehow gone backwards, and CNN political director David Chalian, who started as a political director and has ALSO somehow gone backwards. C-Block (49:00) MONDAYS WITH THURBER: Haven't read one in awhile. One of his most pleasing to hear rather than just read: The Car We Had To Push.          See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

COUNTDOWN BULLETIN: SEASON 3 EPISODE 137 Attempting to question Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at her Propaganda Conference in Los Angeles today about the Trump Junta's illegal usurpation of the California National Guard and its illegal deployment of active military into civilian police enforcement, California Senator Alex Padilla was jumped by a series of Trumpist thugs including uniformed members of the FBI who wrestled him to the ground, threatened him, and handcuffed him. This is simply the latest in a string of domestic terrorist events perpetrated by Trump's government since the beginning of the ICE raids rounding up migrants, naturalized citizens, and native-born Americans alike, last Friday. It precipitated minor protests and violence slightly below the level of that seen after the Los Angeles Lakers' basketball team won its last championship in 2020. The manhandling of Padilla may have not been the most ominous development Thursday in our march towards dictatorship. Pressed at a congressional hearing about the pending case asking a judge to restrain Trump from usurping control of the California National Guard from Governor Newsom, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth refused to confirm he would abide by any ruling from the court with which he would not agree. He is attempting to cloak the insertion of active military into civilian police enforcement, and the overriding of the courts, in some fantasy that he and Trump are enacting "foreign policy" by terrorizing Southern California.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 136: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Gavin Newsom has reached his "EFF IT" moment - and it might prove to be the moment we began to save the democracy. If you MISSED Newsom’s speech (and trust me, I did, its only failure was its rollout) I am going to play the whole thing at the end of the first segment because it was that good. Eight minutes of escalating but suppressed righteous indignation bordering on rage – eight minutes building towards Eff-It - of which I think I am still the Official Exclusive East Coast Distributor. I think I KNOW my eight-minute suppressed righteous indignation speeches and this was outstanding. Newsom alone has realized that all you have to do is stop playing Trump's version of this game, and introduce him to a NEW version in which the Mike Tyson Law applies - and he will have no chance. And Mike Tyson’s law – is that everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” As you listen to the speech, my connoisseur’s advice is to listen to the slow burn and the rapidly decreasing time between each metaphorical shot Newsom takes. It’s not just the FIRST grown-up speech responding to Trump’s evil. It’s a really good one. And it ends with… Trump getting metaphorically punched in the face. But consider the larger context. Newsom’s emergence – this is a stupid analogy but it somehow works – was like a caterpillar emerging as a gigantic butterfly, a butterfly equipped with nukes, a stealth bomber butterfly – and THAT was last Friday with his threat to crash Trump by withholding all of California’s federal taxes, all 692 billion of it – THE economic civil war game-ender I have been advocating out here in the wilderness for a decade. Then he says “wait, I’m not finished yet” and he goes back inside the cocoon for a minute and comes out even LARGER with MORE nukes and now he is THE Resistance, THE Democratic Party, and THE hope to save America.  A week ago Gavin Newsom was posting a podcast with quote “Doctor” Phil McGraw, who did a ride along with ICE raiders. June 4: glad-hand interview that utter fraud Phil McGraw AFTER glad-hand interviewing Newt Gingrich, Michael Savage, Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon. June 6: respond to Trump’s threats to kneecap California by threatening to lead a TAX STRIKE – the most liberal, progressive, in-your-face political protest proposed this century. June 7-8-9: come back and TOP that with calling the bluff of these Halloween Mask bullies like Trump and Tom Homan. June 10: give this speech. So, now the question is: Why haven’t any other Democratic so-called leaders followed Newsom over the top into no-man’s land even though he went first and discovered there are 100 to 200 million Americans just standing there waiting for somebody to lead them against Trump? B-Block (38:22) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Senator Kevin Cramer, who has never held a real job in his life (an entire career as a politician or failed political candidate) doesn't see the need for ANY federal minimum wage. Tulsi Gabbard thinks the "elites" have underground bunkers in which they can survive nuclear war. And Terry Moran got fired for an analytical opinion about Stephen Miller, but Jake Tapper can retweet Jonah Goldberg's opinion retweeting Fox's opinion retweeting Fetterman's opinion about how much the Democrats are hated. Fire. Tapper. Now. C-Block (50:00) IN MEMORY OF MINET GERMAIN OLBERMANN: Tuesday was World Pet Memorial Day and yesterday was the third anniversary of his gotcha day, so please let me tell you about my late rescue Minet. He arrived here a month shy of his 15th birthday with no expectations and very little awareness of the world around him. And then a little dental care and a little attention and the next thing I knew he was literally jumping for joy on the streets of New York. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The contrasting aftermath of the Lakers' championship victory and recent protests reveals startling disparities in law enforcement reactions. An analysis highlights the unchecked power of military involvement in suppressing protests, stirring legal challenges. Delving into political dynamics, the podcast explores the ongoing rivalry involving Trump and Musk. It also blends humor with nostalgia through delightful anecdotes about Walter Matthau, capturing the essence of his impact on cinema while reflecting on the chaotic political landscape.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 134: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Call this what it is. This is Trump's terrorist attack on Los Angeles - and his terrorist threat against every other American city not yet infected with MAGA fascism disease.  It is taking what even the paranoid L.A. police department considers a minor event and trying to manufacture a crisis worthy of burning down our constitutional rights and sending National Guard and perhaps Marines to shoot at civilians on the streets of an American city... and to warn every other city that it could be next. What else do you call it, when the fiendish, demented, Hispanic-hating advisor and bigot calls all this quote “an insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States” when it is in fact a handful of people exercising their protected constitutional rights in the parking lot of a goddamned Home Depot? It is terrorism. It is designed to cause terror and panic and to either use violence or the threat of it to effect political change, extra-legally, by masked and helmeted, faceless men and women, with weapons of war, on the streets of America’s second largest city, to stage an ICE riot and then show what are literally seconds of self-defense by civilians again and again on what are nominally television news channels subverted and perverted into propaganda machines… to warn with unstated menace that THIS will be re-enacted every day for the next month in Southern California and then - where? New York? Chicago? Washington YET there IS a way to stop Trump, here, and to destroy his plans and perhaps his presidency. Right now. Governor Gavin Newsom and the state government of California have proposed leading what is in effect, a TAX STRIKE. "We pay over 80 billion dollars more in taxes than we get back. Maybe it’s time to cut that off," Newsom says. says State Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas is more specific: “We must look at every option, including withholding federal taxes.” California pays $692 Billion a year in federal taxes. If the blue states withheld federal taxes the red states would be figuratively starving by next week. DOGE THIS, Trump. Do it. Stop the dictatorship. Stop the terrorism. B-Block (35:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Dinesh D'Souza and "Buck Millions" hilariously can't process the Musk-Trump fight. There's reportedly something amiss with the book sale figures for the Jake Tapper tome. And last month, New York mayoralty candidate Jessica Ramos branded fellow contender Andrew Cuomo as "The Democrats' Trump." Now - she's endorsed him. C-Block (45:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I saw a video of one of "our" newscasts the other day. He was the stentorian-voiced anchorman. I was the 19-year old intern. He remains one of my favorite people I've ever met in the business, and not just because he dedicated himself to being a thorn in the side of management everywhere. In memory of Bill Jorgensen, this time until next time.    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 133: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: It's still just at the passive-aggressive stage but Elon Musk has not only broken with Trump and ghosted Trump, now he has re-tweeted someone telling MAGAs to go to the comments at Fox News and read how "almost every comment is in agreement with Elon – to see so many vehemently disagreeing with Trump is wild.” This is not going to end well. Pass the popcorn. How is that POSSIBLE? Who could have EVER forseen that relying on a chemical’d-up, psychologically-impaired, persistent over-promising, compulsive sperm donor who may have been the victim of a botched penile implant, could be a BAD thing.  Musk has ghosted Trump and is starting to attack Trump - and Trump can’t say a word because unless Musk bankrolls it Trump won’t be able to subvert the constitution and run for a third term – and unless Musk bankrolls it a Trump successor will never get off the ground and unless Musk bankrolls it the Republicans will lose the House next year AND maybe the Senate too. All Trump has been able to do is the really sad sight of a screenshot of a Musk tweet praising Trump. It’s from May 28th. THIS is the BEST part: Trump cannot trash Musk. As much as he wants to, as much as Musk attacks the House for Trump’s budget bill and its 2-point-4 trillion dollar add to the deficit -without mentioning Trump even though it’s TRUMP’S bill and those idiots in the House like Mike Johnson are just Trump’s SLAVES, as much as Musk is still protecting Trump from himself, Trump has to do the most difficult thing in the world: shut himself up. Keep his mouth shut. OTHER HEADLINES: Trump is now trying to sabotage Columbia's accreditation. It's not too late, Claire, break your deal and sue him for $100 Trillion. Trump the Russian simp also says he talked to Putin about Ukraine and Putin says he'll have to avenge the airbase attacks (what is he going to do? Start bombing Ukrainian cities?) A Republican senator actually asks 'What WAS we ranked" in reading and arithmetic in 1979. And Karoline Leavitt has the yips: she has now called Trump "Chump" three times in the last week. B-Block (25:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Steven Cheung wants you to ignore the legacy media. To prove why, he attaches a clip from...CNN. CNN's Abby Phillip lets a putz named Chris Sununu to compare Trump's post about Biden being executed/cloned to people insisting there are back-up Melanias. And on the same topic somebody named Kaylee McGhee White goes on Fox and insists the nation might've been run by "a cable" of unelected White House officials. C-Block (35:45) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Tomorrow's the anniversary of the day the president of MSNBC wanted to postpone breaking news to do anniversary programming he had dedicated himself to. The breaking news? Ronald Reagan had just died.    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 132: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: “He came in through Biden’s ridiculous Open Border Policy,” Trump writes of the suspect who has confessed to the Boulder Flame-Thrower Attack, “which has hurt our country so badly. He must go out under Trump policy.” Yeah, great. Well, he DIDN'T go out under the Trump policy because the Trump policy is to ignore the actual dangers and simply arrest the innocent and those who pose no threat and thus Trump has blood on his hands. The attack on the weekly march of those remembering the Gaza hostage was carried out by a man here illegally, whom Trump and his big talking crowd of bullies, losers and cowards, have had FOUR months to find and remove, and have criminally failed to do so because they under phony tough guy Tom Homan and Dress-Up Barbie Kristi Noem were too busy kidnapping mothers and gay hairdressers and kids at their high school graduations and people here legally and immigrants dutifully showing up for their hearings the way law-abiding people – law-abiding means NOT LIKE TRUMP – do. That the suspect Mohamed Sabry Soliman, was still here, is TRUMP’S FAULT. Because the entire MAGA immigration STUNT is a show for the racists and the xenophobes. It goes after only the soft targets, it uses only brutality and force when neither is necessary, it is there to terrify one part of this country and satiate the sadism of the other. It is the opposite of securing borders – it is a prelude to the new Trump policy of “Re-migration” – and “Re-migration” is itself a prelude to Ethnic Cleansing. And the champion of re-migration, the demented, warped, soulless bastard behind that, is Stephen Miller, who couldn’t wait to turn the Sunday attack into a sword with which to again try to butcher this nation’s humanity. And I mean he COULDN’T wait, literally. If he had, more people would realize, Miller and his Gestapo are not the solution to the problem, they are its cause. B-Block (20:07) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Something worse than what Glenn Greenwald revealed in "the tape?" How about Glenn Greenwald threatening to reveal me as his source for a story because I criticized him. Plus Riley Gaines has challenged me to a swim race. It's 50 years since I was admitted to my high school's Cum Laude Society and I have an admission to make. And the Washington Post reported that polling showed the weirdest name of them all is "Keith" and I thought they were both serious - and right.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 131: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT:  Trump believes Biden was cloned and executed. Five years ago. He sent this out on his social media account Saturday night:"There is no Joe Biden – executed in 2020. Biden clones doubles and robotic engineered soulless mindless entities are what you see…” If you hear or read that this was Trump RE-posting something that some OTHER lunatic wrote on Trump’s social media site, or that this was Trump TROLLING, or owning the libs - this is incorrect and minimizes the severity of Trump’s accelerating complete mental breakdown. Unlike the original, TRUMP’S version also includes a photo HE has added. No matter what YOUR explanation for this is, or mine, or Fox’s, or his enablers, this country cannot have a president who promulgates theories that his predecessor was a clone, or a body double, or a robot. The dynamic tension keeping someone this damaged and disturbed from deciding now’s the time to nuke the world because don’t worry the people HE likes won’t be affected, is the same as the dynamic tension keeping a badly built bridge upright. It can hold for years or decades and then one day it just collapses and kills everybody. MEANWHILE, MUSK INCONTINENCE STORY LEAKS: Elon Musk was reportedly peeing his pants non-stop during the election? Afterwards? I don’t mean metaphorically. I mean… peeing his pants. New York Times about Musk in May, 2024: “Around that time, Mr. Musk told people that his ketamine use was causing bladder issues, according to people familiar with the conversations... The Food and Drug Administration (warns) chronic use can lead to addiction and problems with bladder pain and control." Where is the Jake Tapper book about THIS? Between THIS and Trump’s revelation that Biden wasn’t cognitively challenged last year and that instead he was dead and cloned and a robot - what does Jake Tapper do now?  B-Block (33:14) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Con writer Kurt Schlichter thinks somebody else is "Two clever by half" never realizing...he isn't. Andrew Cuomo's excuse for breaking NYC traffic laws? He thought the reporters waiting to ask him questions about running for mayor were protestors. And Jake Tapper is losing roughly two viewers for every Biden book he sells.  C-Block (45:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL/SPORTSBALL CENTER: Baseball's annual commemorations of Lou Gehrig have begun. It's the right time to remind you that when "The Iron Horse" was stricken by ALS, plenty of America's top sports authorities were convinced he was either faking it or not deserving of sympathy. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 130: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) BREAKING NEWS: A Reagan judge, an Obama judge, and a Trump judge walk into a courtroom and rule Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs - which not only crashed our economy but that of the entire world's - are not a legal use of the 1977 laws empowering him to take actions in the event of an economic emergency. This is not just any court. It's the United States Court of International Trade. Trump already appealed. Stephen Miller already called it a "judicial coup." The fact that America's corporations simply went along with Trump's crap when it knew - as the court knew - this was executive overreach - is its own problem. The halt on the tariffs will itself probably be halted by the appeals. So the re-shaping of the market will be re-re-shaped by the judges, and re-re-re-shaped by the further litigation. That, of course, is not Trump's problem. His only job is to break stuff. SPECIAL COMMENT: Now it's Governor Gretchen Whitmer has learned the lesson - twice. Never appease Trump, never negotiate with Trump, never cooperate with Trump, never support anything Trump wants, never do anything Trump wants. All that registers with him is: you are easier for him to destroy. She sucked up to him. She worked with him. He tricked her into appearing at his photo-op. She hid her face behind a folder like it was a perp walk. Now, he says he's looking into PARDONING THE TERRORISTS CONVICTED OF TRYING TO KIDNAP HER. There is only one way Gretchen Whitmer is going to SURVIVE Trump, Governor. Apple is going to SURVIVE Trump, Tim Cook. There is only one way Columbia is going to SURVIVE Trump, Claire Shipman. There is only one way the White House Correspondents are going to SURVIVE Trump, Eugene Daniels. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’ll spell it out. Doing what he wants only tells him you will DO WHAT HE WANTS. So he comes back and gives you ANOTHER list of what he wants. He’s a blackmailer. He’s a crooked businessman. He’s a bully. There is only one way to SURVIVE Trump and that is to DESTROY Trump. In a world of White House Correspondents, be the PENTAGON Correspondents. In a world of Apples, be Wal-Mart. In a world of Columbias, be a Harvard. Put your hands on Trump’s shoulders and knee him in the groin. Stand up to him and you can then own HIM, like the Harvard newspaper op-ed writer who has proposed settling the disputes between her school and Trump by challenging Secretary of "Education" Linda McMahon, the wife of the wrestling slime bag, to a Steel Cage Match. ALSO: TRUMP CONFESSES to operating on Russia's behalf and to protecting Putin. HE LEARNS for the first time of the Wall Street analysts mocking him with the tariff acronym "TACO" ("Trump Always Chickens Out") and he chickens out. Turns out Tom Homan also worked for the top Private Prison company. A woman who contributed a million to Trump gets a pardon for her jailbird son. Anybody remember Rudy Giuliani's alleged boast he could sell you a pardon for two million, to be split between him and Trump. And a past president's grandson has died. The president he was the grandson of, left office in... 1845. B-Block (33:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Kristi Noem and the camel she rode in on. Jesse Watters and Rep. Tim Burchett try to make fun of men using straws not remembering there's a photo of Trump at Yankee Stadium using a straw. And boy did THIS sound familiar: Rupert Murdoch just buried a New York Post reporter who followed all the rules and instructions Murdoch's minions had laid out for him, because somebody didn't like the story... Just like in 2001 Rupert personally fired ME for doing exactly the same thing (C-Block 43:00 THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL). The punchline is the reporter's name is Josh Kosman and last September he was the guy at The Post who called and told me they were about to update the RFK Jr/Olivia Nuzzi sexting story by claiming I had lived with Olivia. So I busted his scoop and put the story out immediately. Now we're in the Rupert Isn't A Journalist Club.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.